Little Hong Kong

05. Little Hong Kong

Welcome!

Try not to choke on the smog as your shuttle bats through the thick miasma of Little Hong Kong. It’s an uncomfortable mix of pollution, smoke, and a semi-solid force-field containing the latter two. The force-field allows shuttles in, but attempting to walk through it or send gases through it would prove futile. On the other hand, it’s not all that great. Rather than containing the smog and purifying it, the Sector is just filled with pollutants from the various factories. When exiting the shuttle, you’ll be handed a gas mask. Put it on, or enjoy being violently ill for periods maxing out at two weeks.

Don’t feel awkward about the mask; as citizens of the sector shamble between factories or small cement-brick stalls selling various amenities, you notice they’re all decked in smaller, more fitted masks. They’re just as functional if not more, and they don’t conceal most of the person’s face. You may wonder if someone is willing to trade...If you approach a citizen, you can see some commonalities between all of them: their skin is tinged with gray, and the fitted goggles over their eyes are typically fogged up. They’re not the cleanest people; their hands and feet are bare, and the nails on each are uncut, long, and tinged various shades of yellow. Of course, you’ll find the occasional person who has fashioned gloves and/or shoes out of leftover rags. Some people have decorated the plain gray t-shirts and shorts that seem standard, applying scratched rhinestones, colored glue, or foam letters of symbols, attached with thick staples. The most colorful thing many people here wear is their hair. Some have managed to bleach their hair and dye it a variety of pastel or otherwise vivid colors. Even if their hair lays limp and tangled from the acrid air, the color adds a certain allure. They’re bashful people, but if you approach them and somehow make your acquaintance comfortable, they blossom into giving, optimistic people. Even with so little, they’ll do whatever they can for others.

The area itself is...a bit grim. The sidewalks have blended with the street, so watch your step as large trucks and trailers bound through the sector from warehouse to warehouse. Everything is covered with a fine layer of ash to the touch, and if you look up, the sky seems like it’s just feet above you. In reality, it’s just a layer of whatever’s floating out of the chimneys of the factories lining the streets, warehouses occasionally interspersed between them. It seems the warehouses double as storage and collective housing for the people of Little Hong Kong.

The factories themselves are made of stained, spray painted, and cracked brick that reaches through the smokey sky and curls into the air above. Walking into one, you may discover a series of conveyer belts heading in a hundred different directions. Some are for creation; some for packaging; some are for transport of workers, but god knows which ones those are. You might need a guide for this! Workers shuffle along in organized, expressionless lines as they do their jobs. No matter what, you can’t help but feel at least a bit bad for the citizens here. They’re too kind for what they’re faced with. As a final note: for every shuttle that heads in and out of the sector, you may realize you’ve never seen a Hong Kong resident leaving the sector.

Hold your breath as you enter Sector V: Little Hong Kong. Enjoy your stay.